Who knew President Trump was on to something? Forget ‘finger lickin’ goodness. Taking the President’s lead, fried chicken may be safest eaten with a knife — not just a spork.

Well at least that was the lawsuit filed October 31, 2016 against Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Inc., et al. by Gulfport, Mississippi lawyer Paul Newton Jr.

In his complaint, Newton alleged that for want of a knifehe choked on a piece of fried chicken breast and required emergency surgery the same evening to remove the chicken piece from his throat.

He claimed it was a consequence of Popeyes’ failure to provide customers with a plastic knife with their drive-thru orders. Neither man or woman eats by spork alone.

In addition to his medical and pain and suffering damages, Newton also asked for an order requiring Popeyes to provide its drive-thru customers “with the appropriate utensil or utensils such as a plastic knife to enable such customers to cut their purchased food orders into appropriate portions.”

But in Newton’s case, he later dropped the suit on his own because of “extreme comments directed to me and my family.”

Bottom line, don’t choke on fried chicken — not when there’s still FREE CLE. Along with the standard disclaimers about availability; jurisdictional creditworthiness; and content quality, here’s the latest knife and fork-free update.

FREE CLE

Attorney Protective

“Many lawyers sued for malpractice gain clarity on best practices only after it is too late. This webinar is designed to help you acquire a clearer understanding of the risks by studying what went wrong for other attorneys during their malpractice cases.”

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” I thought of Gandhi’s quotewhen I read about Tom Winston, who at 73 graduates from the University of Tennessee Law School this month. Retired and having concluded there’s “only so much golf you can play,”he decided to attend law school at age 70.

Besides having a resilient and hungry mind, Winston also benefited from something unique to the Volunteer State. Tennesseans 65 years and older can attend any state public institution of higher learning tuition-free. Winston says he’s “surprised more people haven’t taken advantage of it.”

Speaking of free learning, below are the latest links to free continuing legal education programs, both scheduled and on-demand. As always, there are no warranties of continued availability, content quality, or creditworthiness in your jurisdiction.

Inexplicably, lawyer marketers yearn to popularize this fatuous inanity as “a day to shower their favorite legal eagles with sincere affection.” As though the usual medium of exchange, i.e., dinero, moola, shekels, cabbage, tendered by clients to their lawyers wasn’t enough consideration, especially as to crowd out any thoughts of love. Let’s be real here.

But then two days ago, I readthat the State Bar of California was considering a flat-out ban on that most intense version of love your lawyer — sex between lawyers and their clients. Say what? Who knew sex with clients was still in some way permissible in California? In most jurisdictions, it isn’t.

But no matter the outcome on proposed ethical rule amendments on lawyer lovin,’ now that year-end approaches, it’s time for love of an academic kind. It’s another updated list of free online CLE. The usual disclaimers about availability, suitability and quality apply.

In April, the Nevada State Bar’s Board of Governors blast emailed members a third-party confidential survey asking for their “opinion on the CLE and annual license fee exemptions currently offered to members older than 70.” The survey is apparently driven by proponents who want to eliminate that age exemption. Others want it left in place. Will the survey decide the matter? I rather doubt it. In any case, the results are supposed to be published online and/or in the Nevada Bar’s magazine.

Currently, there are 412 Nevada lawyers age 70 or older actively practicing. But those silver legal eagles better start worrying. Once the age exemption is eliminated, those 412 lawyers, representing less than 5% of Nevada’s 8,818 active lawyers, will each sustain about $1,000 in new higher annual costs to practice.

Base annual dues in Nevada are presently $450. In addition, there’s a separate yearly $40 paid to the Nevada CLE Board. This amounts to $490 in total mandatory annual fees. And with the average cost of an hour’s worth of Bar CLEat about $45 multiplied by a mandated 12 annual CLE hours — tack on another $540 to the annual tariff. Wine may improve with age — but not it seems the bottom line for Nevada’s older lawyers.

As far as the Bar’s concerned, however, the news would be positive. Assuming the 412 septuagenarian lawyers satisfy their CLE requirements through the Bar, the projected fiscal impact for the Nevada Bar will to the sunny side of potentially over $400,000 in higher annual revenues based on the infusion of new dues-payers and CLE potentially totaling $1030 in fees X 412 active senior Nevada attorneys.

Right now, millenials outnumber the 75.4 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. But the bad news for those 18 to 34 year olds is that many Boomers aren’t retiring. So as Baby Boomers, including lawyers, continue working past retirement age, it’s not surprising that mandatory bars are trending toward revoking senior lawyer age exemptions. After all, the bureaucratic maw must be fed. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘the bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.’

Some mandatory bars like the State Bar of Arizona eliminated their age exemptions years ago. As a matter of fact, in the Grand Canyon state, aging lawyers who take retirement status still pay bar dues. The only way to stop paying is to resign in good standing or to rest in peace beneath the ground. And in Texas, on April 28, 2015, the Texas Supreme Court amended its Bar Rules to eliminate its longstanding MCLE exemption for so-called emeritus attorneys, those aged 70-years and up.

Understandably, it’s a bit unseemly to ascribe money grasping reasons to these moves. So look instead for overused policy dodges dressed up in public protection apparel to justify eliminating the age exemptions. Doddering dinosaur lawyers who fail to keep abreast of the law may pose risks to consumers is how the argument goes. But unfortunately for proponents, there’s never been proof or any empirical evidence that continuing legal education makes lawyers of any age more competent, professional or ethical.

It seems “Wisdom doesn’t automatically come with old age,” according to the late Abigail Van Buren. “Nothing does – except wrinkles. It’s true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.”

Finally, paraphrasing Francis Bacon, “Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust,” — and for mandatory state bars, old lawyers to tax.

FREE ONLINE CLE.

(The usual disclaimers about content, availability and jurisdictional creditworthiness apply).

I’ve been asked why I don’t blog about one of the hot button topics of the day like, for instances, the past notorious murder cases of Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias or Steven Avery. There are lots of reasons, I reply, not the least being that I’m not a criminal defense lawyer. Without investing time and study, it’s harder to weigh in on the nuances and strategies of an unfamiliar practice area.

That’s not to say, of course, that I haven’t sometimes borrowed a page from Oscar Wilde and opined anyway. Wilde famously observed, “I love to talk about nothing. It’s the only thing I know anything about.”

The better reason is a more practical one. Unless I take up the habits of a paid blogger I once read about — who has the time to keep up? No wonder the parenthetical quote in Anand Giridharadas‘ April 15th New York Times Book Review rang so true for me. Giriharadas wrote, “A boss of mine once said, of an article I had drafted over several months, that I had done a terrific job of catching myself up to a conversation the world had been having without me.”

I don’t recall much about that book review — except for that quote. By the time I get around to posting about a hot topic, the conversation the world has been having will have indeed ended without me.

Just the same, what I most remember about that paid blogger is that he claimed to have so many blogging ideas, it was costing him sleep. During the night, his fertile brain would intermittently jolt him awake with creative inspiration. He’d then immediately jot down the ideas on the laptop kept conveniently on his nightstand. The tale, tall or not, unfortunately failed to mention what his wife thought about his many nocturnal mental emissions.

My skepticism about this guy’s supposed excess creative juices led me to speculate on other causes. His interrupted sleep was the result of (A) a self-denying work ethic; (B) an overriding devotion to making a buck; (C) an enlarged prostate; or (D) undiagnosed sleep apnea. I went with (B). Unlike those of us who make no money from web logs, it’s more than likely a paid blogging gig will produce income induced insomnia.

Pragmatically speaking, then, without such blogging pecuniary inducement it’s hard to keep up with events. Too often they overtake opportunities to timely blog. Had I the self-discipline to reduce my ruminations to 140 characters on Twitter, I guess my commentaries could have more immediacy just like the tweets of a certain carrot-colored presumptive presidential nominee. But 140 characters?

Last year, a lawyer who never lets facts get in the way of opinion griped, “You don’t respect my time — if you expect me to read all that,” this after I sent him facts. Foolish me. He’s right. Hell, a nun in parochial school once accused me of “diarrhea of the pen” — no doubt for disrespecting her time.

The bottom line is I don’t have the paid blogger’s remunerative incentives or the surplus shuteye to look for more sleep deprivation. As it is, I guard my 5 hours or so of overnight sack time. And besides I get enough ideas during waking hours without having to fish for them at night.

And with that, here’s another Free CLE update. The usual disclaimers apply about continued availability, content and jurisdictional creditworthiness.

By now, regular readers know my regard for mandatory continuing legal education and why I periodically post free online CLE programs here. Not only is it mainly a money grab by compulsory membership bar associations, there’s no statistical evidence of a correlation, much less any causation between CLE and attorney competence.

More specifically, the California Supreme Court in People v. Ngo (1996) 14 Cal. 4th 30 observed: “Although the right to counsel clearly entails a right to competent representation by a licensed attorney, and although MCLE requirements clearly do relate to professional competence, in the sense they are intended to enhance the competence of attorneys practicing law in this state, the inference is unwarranted that any and all noncompliance with those requirements necessarily establishes an attorney’s professional incompetence or constitutionally deficient performance in representation following enrollment on inactive status.”

Just the same, to maintain their ticket to ride and avoid the kind of circumstances visited upon counsel for Tin Trung Ngo, compliance with mandatory CLE remains a necessary evil in most jurisdictions. But why pay hundreds of dollars per year for it? Why suffer gluteal paralysis attending an overpriced annual bar convention just to cram CLE ahead of fiscal year deadlines? Below find the latest installment of free online continuing legal education. The usual disclaimers about jurisdictional creditworthiness, continued availability, and content quality apply.

“Tips, best practices and practical solutions on topics including: model rules that apply to marketing, the importance of good client relations, marketing solutions, and how staff can assist in providing good client relations.”

I was having my weekly bowl of pho — but not at the phonetically mischievous Beaverton, Oregon restaurant pictured above. If you don’t know, the Vietnamese rice noodle and beef soup known as pho is pronounced ‘fuh.’ You figure outthe rest.

In any event, I was slurping and reading about an Aussie-Vietnamese hoaxer who’d punked the news and online social media. The faker falsely claimed Facebook had discriminated against him by repeatedly shutting down his Facebook profile over accusations he was using a fake name. He claimed his name was ‘PhucDatBich’ and even posted an online image of his passport to ‘prove’ it was really his given name.

But Facebook was right after all. The name was fake, all part of an elaborate social media spoof perpetrated by a 23-year old Melbourne, Australia man named Tin Le or Thien Nguyen — if you believe someone else who later claimed to have known “Phuc” from his school days.

Phonetic political correctness.

The hoaxer explained that he’d created the phonetically rude ‘Phuc Dat Bich’ name hoaxto fool the media and to tweak Facebook over its real names policy. “I’ve never believed it’s necessary for it to be mandatory to have your entire name to be published on social media,” he expounded. “People should be free to use any name they desire. Facebook needs to understand that it is utterly impossible to legitimise a place where there will always be pranksters and tricksters,” he added.

B.S. on the Web.

So no surprise. The web is full of hoaxes, urban legends, falsely attributed quotes, netlore and just pasture-variety bull. A healthy dose of skepticism ought to be axiomatic, especially when it comes to much of what ‘goes viral’ on the Internet.

Just this week there was another bogus story, ‘World’s biggest’ drug kingpin El Chapo declares war on ISIS. More bull, this time from a misunderstood satirist. Memo to literary device humorist — it’s not satire if no one gets it. But also blame the 24/7 all-news-all-the-time media that irresponsibly runs stories without bothering to fact-check. Chapo didn’t threaten “true terror” in an encrypted email to Isis leaders. It was another hoax.

Internet B.S. is particularly endemic in email and social media chain letters. Last month, somebody emailed me an essay falsely attributed to football coach turned sports commentator Lou Holtz. The “Two Americas” essay I received was entitled “Lou Holtz Nails It!” — although, he didn’t. It was authored by someone else a lot less famous than Lou.

Fortunately, with year-end upon us and lawyers scrambling to complete last-minute calendar CLE, now’s as good a time as any to turn away from lies, nonsense and cow pie capers. I’m happy to provide instead the latest FREE CLE updates.